If you change your spot more often when making music, a is highly recommended. Today’s laptops (notebooks) have enough power to mix your tracks properly and make music wherever you need or you want. On the market, we’ll find many models are suitable for making music. To know which laptops are best for music production, google for this for appropriate tests.
Than there is an issue with upgrades. Most windows notebooks can be easily upgraded with more RAM or larger/bigger hdd, so you can keep your win notebook running for many years. Regarding software/OS a windows notebook is better choice. More tools, bigger community. For development you have all the tools as on Mac + some more, like Eclipse or Idea. I need some help choosing a programming language and a program for my exam's project. I would like to program a piece software, for both Windows and Mac OS X.
Many notebooks are tested on different websites. Recommended laptops are with a numeric keypad.
This can be used for shortcuts (start, stop, record). Especially with a 15-inch notebook, it is sometimes difficult to read the name of the controller or the numerical values of some digital instruments or effects. It’s best to get an additional screen, which you can then connect to the notebook.
Recommended sizes are 24 or 27 inches. Choose a matte screen to avoid annoying reflections. So you can, for example, display the mixer on the laptop screen and the trace view on the main screen. It would also be possible to close the laptop and only work on the main screen or connect to another screen. Be sure that your laptop has two outputs on the graphics card. Notebooks basically have a smaller number of USB ports than PCs. These can be extended with so-called USB hubs.
However, all devices connected to the USB hub share the speed of the one USB port. For USB dongles, mouse and keyboard but that should not be a problem. This post comes as a continuation of the ( Buyer’s Guide). (We recommend you to read this first to get an better idea on what you should choose next).
Here’s a list of some of our recommendations on the best laptop for music production for those who use Windows but also for those who prefer MAC OS: Windows Asus Zenbook Windows based laptop with best performance. This is one of those fancy ultrabooks you keep hearing about. Pricey, yes, but man does it pack a punch!
They’re also praised for being lightweight, making them extremely portable. You can look into other ultrabooks too, but Asus has a reputation for a reason. Acer Aspire Budget Windows-based laptop. These come highly recommended, even if you’re not just looking for a budget.
They offer higher specs than you would expect for the price, but keep in mind that there’s always a compromise. MAC OS Macbook Pro Mac/OSX based for best performance. The Macbook Pro is the leading powerhouse in the Apple world. Again, pricey, especially if you opt for their retina display, but you’ll never need another laptop ever again. You can actually do which means it’ll only cost you a few pounds every week, making it so much more affordable! Macbook Air Budget OSX solution There’s not much to say here. It’s a Mac that’s not as powerful as the Macbook Pro, but still good enough to fulfill all your music production needs.
More recommendations: Lenovo ThinkPad Portable solution for live DJing and recording on location. It’s a tablet/laptop. This thing is sturdy, compact, compatible, good battery life, matte screen option and backlit keyboard. Need I say more? If you’re going to use your laptop as a mobile audio studio – this is what you need!
Dell XPS 13 (new 2015 version) A promising option to look into. This model is praised for being a 13″ screen packed in 11.6″ casing.
It’s also got incredible battery life (they claim it’s 12 hours), matte screen option, backlit keyboard and the components pack a punch! This might be a great option for a portable studio, but it’s a bit early to tell. So, what do you generally recommend? You’re really asking me this? Didn’t I say it’s relative?
Okay, I’ll give you a recommendation: if you can afford it – go all-purpose. This means those pricey “best performance options”.
So you’ll be more future proof. The more expensive options will stay relevant for at least 5 years (often 10) and you won’t have any problems in case you suddenly realize you want to take your laptop out or make it the center of your music production studio. I would definitely take a notebook that also has a SSD hard drive and HD display. It should also be a fast i7 of the current generation. If you are traveling a lot, weight is certainly to be considered. When deciding what to buy, make sure you buy something you’ll use for a long while. Don’t think in terms of “I’ll replace it later” because as audio engineers there’s more important equipment to spend money on.
So I bought my Surface Book for my studies (Mechanical Engineering) and it's ideal for that, but I want to start learning to program and Windows really does seem to make everything more difficult. Let's say I want to start a small Python project using Github. To get Python I need the special Python-for-Windows installer. Same story for Git. Each of these installers has various install options and, as a beginner, it's hard to know what the best option is in every case (Git lets me choose an option that would overwrite Windows' 'find' and 'sort' tools and then asks if I want it to convert 'LF' to 'CRLF' for commits, for example).
Compare this to 'apt-get install' in Ubuntu. Installs everything with a single command and also has the added benefit of keeping everything up-to-date. Yes, Chocolatey exists but it seems unavoidably hacky (effectively just automating the above Windows installers) Case study 2: Trying to follow the. In order to set Windows up for C, I need Cygwin so I can use gcc. Basically so much of a hassle that it's recommended just to download an Ubuntu VirtualBox image anyway. I guess there's a way to use the Visual Studio compiler but I'm not really experienced enough to know how to go about doing that (I need to use NetBeans as my IDE because the course has extensions for it). So I guess the point I'm making is that it would seem a lot easier to program in any OS other than Windows in order to avoid jumping through all these hoops and then having to remember which hoops I've jumped through in order to potentially troubleshoot later down the line.
Are there any experienced devs using a Surface who disagree? I'd love to here some differing views on this. I'm a complete beginner to all this stuff so I'm sure there's a lot I'm not considering.
Oh and a bonus complaint: Why are so many programs still not HDPI aware? Either the GUI elements are all tiny or it uses the 2:1 scaling which makes everything pixellated. Off the top of my head, this is true for SumatraPDF, Notepad, NetBeans, pretty much any installer, Audacity, even some of the tools built into the OS! (Device Manager, Performance Monitor and the Management Console iirc).
The next Win10 Update has Ubuntu's bash, so you can actually use apt-get directly in Windows. I have not yet tried it in this context though. As for Git, git is very easy to use in Windows and I use it daily with Eclipse/PHPStorm and Co. I also worked on a small Python Project with Atom and Git on Windows earlier this year and did not run into any issues. As for your C stuff, I can't help there, never touched it, but there is, maybe those guys can help you further. A lot of Software is not HDPI aware because those High resolutions are still fairly new in the Mainstream sector.
Especially programms that have many iterations behind them already, like Notepad and Netbeans, would require probably huge refactoring to adjust their UI which is sometimes not a priority due to the time investment. I'm an experienced developer, who uses a Surface Pro 3 at work everyday.
Your feelings on this are accurate - for someone just starting out, doing the work you've described, you would probably have an easier time using Unix than Windows. That doesn't mean developing in general is better on Unix. (I use a Surface Pro 3 everyday, doing a ton of Java Web and Android development.
It's great, a first class supported platform) But when I need to work on Ruby/Rails stuff, I switch to a Mac. You technically could do that on Windows too, but for those communities, it's not the expected convention, you'd be fighting with your system more than others. Similarly for you, most Python and C stuff happens in Linux. You technically could do that all in Windows, but especially starting out, it will probably be less work for you and less frustrating, if you just install a Linux VM and use that instead. I've been a programmer for 20 years primarily on Windows machines. The benefits I see using a Mac are: 1) It is easy to test code on OSX, Windows, and Linux thanks to virtual machine software, such as parallels. If you use Windows exclusively you have no legal way to test on OSX.
2) If you want to deploy to the iOS app store; you need a Mac. I assume this is similar for the Mac app store. Some tool chains allow you to develop / test iOS software on Windows machines, but you need to be on a Mac to actually upload it.
It sounds like you are entering a new realm and overwhelmed by choices. But, I am not convinced you would have a smaller learning curve if using a Mac.
No, simply no. What Jim said, truth.
Sometimes the target environment and tools may default to something that seems better on one than the other but this has more to do with the target environment and where the tools got started. Even that is not always the case. Bottom line there's a lot to learn especially when getting established and a curated environment may be more suitable to beginners.
![Better Better](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125583489/532273959.jpeg)
Then what happens is you get accustomed to certain ways of doing things and you think it's the best way even though it may not be. Some things are as diverse as they are because everyone has a better idea on how it should be done so off they go to make their own. Seriously sharp double edged sword there and it can cut you to ribbons faster than you can compile hello world. Get into a program learn the ropes, then try others.
Some you just wont like, it's OK. The problem is, C is a language where most devs use Linux. It's also meant for deep system programming/ microcontrollers. Which is as platform dependent as you can get. Just wait for bash on Ubuntu on windows and use gcc, or write some C in visual studio or clion. I'm programming daily, although mainly in Golang, but also other languages. The truth is, you'll end up with using vm's no matter which system you have.
Or just check out docker. (Docker for windows open beta).
It works great on windows. As soon as you get to know all the tools, you'll also understand how they fit in. Don't worry, it takes some time. Ugh I've had terrible experiences with Python (and Eclipse as an IDE). I too was a mechanical engineering student and all I wanted to do was to fucking learn python. Shit took me 5 hrs to figure out how to install correctly.and I'm pretty computer savvy. When I needed to program in C, I downloaded MS Visual Studio and had it up and running (and understanding the basics of the program structure) within an hour and a half.
So for me, the problem was lack of clarity in the tools to be used in Windows.